Beautiful Rebellion
by BroadwayBaggins
Summary: Tom Branson lives in the sleepy village of Downton, where nothing of interest ever seems to happen. That is, until he meets the beautiful and mysterious Sybil Crawley. Tom is immediately drawn to her despite the objections of her reclusive family, but Sybil is hiding a secret. Her family comes from an ancient line of Casters, and the 16th moon approaches. DA/Caster Chronicles AU
1. Prologue

"_Sixteen Moons, Sixteen Years  
Sixteen of her deepest fears  
Feuds across time, love turned to hate_

_It may already be too late_

_Sixteen moons, sixteen years  
Sound of thunder in your ears  
Sixteen chances to be free_

_Light and Dark splits sisters three_

Sixteen moons, sixteen years 

_The day has come that she most fears_

_Sixteen secrets come to light_

_In early dawn and darkest night_

_Forbidden love, so pure and sweet_

_Can lead to triumph or defeat_

_Drawn together, tempting fate_

_Worlds apart where dangers wait_

_Sixteen moons, sixteen years  
The Claiming moon, the hour nears  
In these pages Darkness clears  
Powers bind what fire sears_

Sixteeth moon, Sixteenth year  
now has come the day you fear  
Claim or be Claimed  
Beware the fall

_Claim yourself or lose it all_


	2. Holy water cannot help you now

_The dream unfolded as it always did._

_The shadow of a great house, engulfing everything in its wake as he ran. The roll of thunder from dark clouds overhead, a storm unlike any this town had ever seen threatening to break at any moment. The scent of smoke heavy in the air, all but choking his lungs as he tried desperately to keep moving forward, feeling as though every step he took might turn out to be his last. Behind the acrid scent of the smoke there was another aroma in the air, one of approaching rain, but the smoke threatened to engulf it all until it was no more than a memory. And through it all, through the hazy smoke and the panic in his heart and the clamor of battle in his ears, was her._

_Her._

_She stood with her back to him on a field of singed grass, her dark hair streaming out behind her in the gale-force wind. The elegant skirts of her dress whipped around her ankles as she slowly raised a hand towards the sky. He sped up, desperate to reach her before it was too late, before she did something that the two of them would never be able to take back. Her name was on the tip of his tongue, but his aching lungs and burning throat betrayed him, and he could not speak. Every step towards her seemed to take a lifetime, but he could not stop. He had to reach her. He had to…_

_Suddenly, he saw her begin to turn around. Her eyes across the field bored into his, unimaginable love and pain and conflict etched into orbs that seemed to change color before his very eyes—in some moments deepest blue and in others the color of liquid gold. She reached out to him, her face a mask of desperation, as she opened her mouth to call out to him. _

"_TOM!"_

"Tom Branson! If you're not in this kitchen in the next five minutes you can say goodbye to your breakfast!" a harsh voice shouted up the stairs, punctuated by a Scottish brogue and more than a little impatience. Tom Branson rolled over in bed and covered his head with the quilt, shielding his eyes from the late morning light that was filtering in through his open windows. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to fall back into his dream before it was lost from him forever, but the shout came again. "I won't have you wasting the day away up there! Five minutes and not one second more!" He heard footsteps retreat away from the staircase, and he opened his eyes blearily. Slowly, his room came into focus—the ancient four-poster bed that had come with the little cottage when they had moved in, various articles of clothing strewn across the floor haphazardly despite all of the times he'd been told to put them away, the mahogany bookshelves across the room so crammed with books that he had long since given up organizing them and instead let them accumulate, piling up in multiple rows on each shelf, hoping he would remember where he put them if he ever needed a specific volume. His bookshelf contained his entire life, or so it seemed, trapped within the pages of books—narratives that he had escaped into whenever he could, everything from the classics to _Harry Potter_ to the volumes of history given to him by his mother…

"Tom Branson!" came the voice again. Tom smiled faintly and sat up, stretching his arms up over his head and looking towards the door.

"In a minute, Mrs. Hughes!" he called to the housekeeper as he swung his feet off the edge of the bed. Tom had something to do first. The dream was still so fresh in his mind, as vivid as if it had not been a dream at all. He had to get it all down before he forgot it. Eagerly, he reached for the battered spiral-bound notebook he kept beside the bed as he had since the night the dream had first appeared, his pen flying over the pages to record the dream before it was lost to him forever.

The girl in the dream had never spoken his name before.

His hand flew over the page as he frantically tried to record every detail of the dream, everything from the wild look in the girl's eyes to the biting wind to the ominous feeling in the air, as if a storm was about to break that would sweep them all away. He had been having the same dream, more or less, for weeks now. They had come out of nowhere, only a few times a week at first but steadily becoming recurring. They were essentially the same every night—the roaring wind on the air, the smell of fire and the roar of thunder overhead, him running as fast as his legs could carry him but never seeming to truly get anywhere. And in every single one of them there she was, that beautiful girl that he could not explain no matter how hard he tried. After the first week of the dreams he had done a little research into the science of dreaming, and every source he had tried had led him to the same conclusion—that the brain cannot conjure faces into dreams from nowhere, that every face a person sees in a dream is the face of someone they have seen in the waking world. Yet Tom was certain that he did not know the girl in the dream—at least, that he had never once laid eyes on her while awake. Her wild dark curls, those eyes that seemed to know everything about him with just one single look, begging him not to come any closer. He knew her, in the dream—he _knew_ he did. That's why it was so important that he run to her, that he get to her before the others could…so he could keep her safe as best as he knew how. He knew that in his heart, and that same desperate urgency permeated every dream. In the dream, Tom knew her.

And yet every time he opened his eyes, her identity would vanish once again, and he would only be left with more questions.

His pen scratched frantically at the paper as he wrote, trying to reach into the deepest corners of his mind to capture every last bit of the dream before it faded away. Every single page of the notebook was like this, his handwriting scrawled across the page depicting the weather in the dream, the face of the girl and the look in her eyes as she turned to him…how it felt like a knife in his heart whenever he saw the desperation on her face. Some pages were sprinkled with sketches as well, of the shadow of the house or of the girl herself, but none of them ever seemed to do justice to this strange beauty that his heart seemed to know even if his head did not. Tom wasn't sure if even the most skilled artist would have been able to capture that look. Other pages were simply filled with writing, overlapping and cramming into the margins of the paper in order to capture every last detail before they slipped from his consciousness forever. Sometimes he even tried to turn his fractured memories into a story, stringing together a narrative of his own as if that alone were enough to make sense of it all. It never quite worked, but it helped when he was racking his brain trying to explain why every night he was dreaming of a girl he was certain he had never met. At the very least, it made him feel a bit less mental about the whole thing…but what if he _was_ losing it? If anyone were to see the notebook, Tom was sure they would think he needed to be put away somewhere. How could he ever explain the book to any of his friends, or to Mrs. Hughes if she ever came across it? How could he make them understand that writing it all down, every bit of it, was the only way to truly make sense of it all in his head? His mother had always told him that writing things down was the first step to figuring them out, and Tom had never questioned her about that before, but now he was beginning to wonder if it was worth it torturing himself like this. These days, it seemed that with every word, he was even further from the truth than he had been before…

_I wish you were here, Ma. I wish I could talk to you about this…you'd know what to do. You'd at least know where to start. You always did…_

"Tom Branson, this is your last warning!"

Mrs. Hughes' voice rang through the hallway again, sounding much closer this time. Tom was so startled that he jumped, sending his hand flying across the page and smearing the ink. He quickly put the cap back on his pen and slammed the notebook shut, stuffing it beneath his pillow so Mrs. Hughes wouldn't see it if she happened to come upstairs to tidy up. "I'll be right there!"

He stood up and quickly fled the room, knowing that when the housekeeper used that tone of voice she was no longer kidding around. Tom all but ran past his brother Kieran's room, the door closed as it had been since his brother had gone off to university in Dublin the year before. It had been strange, adjusting to being an only child, but even so it wasn't entirely unexpected. The Bransons had always known that their oldest child had been itching to go back to Ireland again since the day they'd moved. He had fought the move every step of the way, and in the end the only thing that had been able to placate him was the knowledge that as soon as he finished school, he could go back to Ireland for university. He had come back to visit when his schedule allowed, and for the summer, but after their mother had died Kieran had claimed there was no reason for him to come back home now. His room had been emptied entirely when he'd left after the funeral four months ago, and he hadn't been back since. His door remained firmly shut, a constant reminder that there was more than one ghost haunting the Branson's home now. Kieran's absence echoed almost as much as their mother's did.

As he passed his father's door, Tom's footsteps became quieter. His dad was the third ghost haunting the cottage now, holed up in his room for days at a time as his grief consumed him. If it weren't for Mrs. Hughes, Tom was certain that there would be days in that house when he didn't speak to another human being. He paused before the door, one hand out as if poised to knock, but thought better of it. Maybe today would be one of the days when Dad actually got up on his own.

He took the stairs two at a time, almost falling over himself in his haste to get downstairs before Mrs. Hughes made good on her threat. He could still hear the skillet sizzling on the stove, and as he skidded into the kitchen he saw a plate of eggs, bacon, and toast growing cold at his usual spot. Mrs. Hughes had her back to him and was angrily stirring a bowl of what looked like some sort of cake mix. "There you are," she said, not turning to face him. "I won't have you keep me waiting like this every day, Tom Branson. Just because you're on summer holidays doesn't mean you get to waste your life away. From now on if you want breakfast, you get down here on time. I am not a short-order cook."

Tom bit back a smile as he sat down, swallowing the comment that was on the tip of his tongue about how she certainly looked like one right now. He knew better than to argue when she was like this. In all the years he had known her, she had only lost her temper with him fully a couple of times, but it had been enough to assure Tom that pressing his luck with her was never a good idea. "Yes, Mrs. Hughes," he said obediently, taking a sip of milk. He studied her thoughtfully as he began to eat, wondering just what had happened to put her into such a foul mood. It couldn't be just him—she only ever cooked like this, in a frenzy, when something was really bothering her. He wondered if Dad had come down already and said something to her, and how much damage control he was going to have to do now to pick up the pieces. The fact that Mrs. Hughes had devoted so much of her time to them since Mrs. Branson's death was a miracle in itself, and at this point he wasn't sure what they would do without her. If she left them…

Before he could pluck up the courage to ask her, though, she spoke up. Her hands were braced against the countertop, and she still did not meet his eyes. "I heard an interesting bit of news in the village this morning," she said, speaking in short, clipped sentences that made Tom wonder if the news was truly as interesting to her as it was annoying. She sighed, seeming to sag for a bit before she came back to life. Whatever news she had heard, Tom had a feeling it wasn't good.

"The Crawleys are coming back from London."


	3. A thousand armies couldn't keep me out

"What?" Tom asked through a mouthful of eggs, chewing quickly before Mrs. Hughes could reprimand him for talking with his mouth full. "The Crawleys? What do you mean, back from London? They haven't been in London that I know of…" The only Crawleys he knew of were Matthew Crawley and his mother Isobel, who had moved to the village around the same time as the Bransons had. Matthew had quickly become Tom's closest friend in England, helping him transition to a new school and a new country and being someone to talk to in the months following his mother's death. His brow furrowed as he furrowed his brow and took another bite of his breakfast, trying to remember if Matthew had mentioned anything about going to London the last time they'd spoken. Even if he had, though, it didn't do anything to explain Mrs. Hughes' reaction to the news that they were coming back. She had always been fond of Matthew and Isobel, welcoming Matthew whenever Tom brought him home to hang out after school and making sure to send a few cartons of leftovers with him to take home to his mother whenever he left. In Tom's entire life he hadn't seen the woman utter so much as a harsh word to Matthew, which was more than he could say for himself. Why was Mrs. Hughes acting as if this news was the worst thing in the world that could have happened?

Mrs. Hughes had once again picked up her mixing bowl and was busy whisking the contents of it into oblivion, her arm moving so quickly Tom was surprised bits of batter weren't flying out across the room. From the smell and the empty carton of blueberries on the counter, she was in the process of making scones, not cake as he had originally thought. Tom frowned again, bringing his cup of tea to his lips. This frantic baking was never a good sign. Mrs. Hughes claimed it calmed her nerves, and Tom had grown to anticipate her wrath whenever he came home to see that she was busy cooking up enough food to feed an army. Most of that batch of scones would probably go straight down to the hospital where Matthew's mother ran the board, and Tom would be lucky if he got even a crumb of it for himself. _Then again…it's not me she's cross at…_Not that he really cared about the scones, of course, he was more interested in the reason for him. What had happened to get the normally unflappable Mrs. Hughes so upset?

She huffed a sigh, still stirring like a woman possessed. "Not _those_ Crawleys," she said with obvious derision, as if Tom should have automatically known who she was referring to. "I'm talking about the _other_ Crawleys, Tom. The ones up at Downton Abbey. They've been away in London for the last year or so, but word has it that they're coming back." Mrs. Hughes' tone was withering, full of scorn and derision bordering on downright furious, one that Tom knew well after these last few years of knowing her. When Tom looked up at her again, his brow still knit together in thought, he could have sworn he saw the hand holding the mixing bowl begin to shake. It was as if she wasn't just angry that these Crawleys were coming back from wherever they'd been…but that she was afraid of what it might mean as well.

Tom thought for another minute before a lightbulb went off in his head. "Oh, those Crawleys? The one at the creepy big house that's always empty? They're obscurely related to Matthew somehow, aren't they?" Now that he thought about it, he had heard about those other Crawleys once or twice before, mainly in hushed whispers by people who seemed both jealous of them and perhaps a little afraid…not entirely unlike how Mrs. Hughes was acting now. The entire village was practically funded on the Crawley money, or so people believed, but the family was rarely mentioned in conversation. Seeing them outside of their vast estate of Downton Abbey was even more unheard of. Tom had seen the old Abbey once or twice before on walks, but most people actively avoided the place, always evading giving a straight answer when asked why. There were so many rumors about Downton that it was hard to know what was fact and what was fiction. Tom was fairly certain it had been a hospital of some sort during the Great War, and after it had somehow managed to stay in the Crawley family despite the decline of the British aristocracy. Now it was maintained by staff as elusive as their employers, silently keeping watch over the village as time made its mark on the estate and ivy crawled up its sides. It had been empty for as long as Tom could remember, and the idea of people living in it was both strange and somehow exciting.

"Yes," Mrs. Hughes said, her voice clipped and her tone telling Tom once and for all that the conversation was over. "The very same. I just heard the news this morning, so they should be back at Downton in a number of days…we were better off when they were still in London, the lot of them!" Before he could blink she was upon him, taking his plate even though his breakfast still lay half-finished on it. He opened his mouth to protest, but his food had already disappeared down the sink. He snapped his mouth shut. Mrs. Hughes, who had made enough food to feed the entire British army after Mrs. Branson had died, who believed that the solution to any problem was a good meal, had never taken his plate from him before. She turned on the sink and water exploded from the faucet, so that Tom had to raise his voice to ask the question that was begging to escape his lips.

"Mrs. Hughes, I don't understand—"

"No," she said, seeming to deflate before him. "No you don't, and you won't if I have anything to say about it. Promise me, Tom Branson. Promise me that you won't go over there looking for trouble." She slowly turned to face him, her expression as grave as it had been on the day of his mother's funeral. "Promise me that you'll stay far away from Downton Abbey."

As he stared at her, a million questions still swarming in his head, Tom managed to nod.

The rest of the morning was painfully awkward. Mrs. Hughes handed Tom a tray of breakfast to take up to his father, actively ignoring Tom's gaze so he could not inquire anymore about the Crawley family. He trudged upstairs with the tray, nicking a few sausages for himself to make up for his own unfinished breakfast. It wasn't as if his father would miss them. Tom rapped lightly on the door once and waited for an answer, but as usual it was silent behind the door. "Da?" he called softly, but again there was no response. "Da, I've got your breakfast here for you…you need to eat something. She…she would want you to…" Even the mention of his mother seemed to shoot an arrow straight through his heart, the loss of her was still so fresh. "Come on, Da…just come and eat something…"

There was still no answer, and Tom heaved a sigh. "I'm setting it down right by the door, okay?" he said, his voice gentle as he put the tray down by the floor. "Just come and get it when you feel like it…hurry, or it'll get cold…I'll see you later, Da."

Tom already knew that he would not.

He made his way back to his room, wondering when it had happened that his and his father's roles had switched, and he was the one acting like the parent. Just the thought of it made his stomach churn, and he had to resist the urge to stomp his feet or slam the door, to do _something_ that reminded him that he was the child here and not his father. He threw himself on his bed and tried to read, but the words kept swimming on the page before him, blurring together and making about as much sense as Mrs. Hughes had downstairs. He swore under his breath and slammed the book closed, laying on his back and staring up at the ceiling. It was decorated in hundreds of glow-in-the-dark stars, the kind little kids had in their bedrooms, arranged into constellations by him and his mother. He had tried to talk her out of it, protesting that he was too old for such things, but she had insisted. They had made a whole day of it, going back and forth between climbing the ladder and sticking them up with adhesive and poring through books and internet printouts, trying to make sure everything was just right. To this day it was one of his favorite memories of his mother…maybe because it had been one of the last.

Tom sat bolt upright, deciding that he could no more stay in that room right now than he could get Mrs. Hughes to open up about the Crawleys. It was as if a thousand ants had crawled beneath his skin and now were fighting to get out, rising to the surface just as his grief for his mother was. He had to get out of there, and he didn't care where he went as long as it was away from that house full of memories and ghosts. Shouting to Mrs. Hughes that he was going to see Matthew, he snatched his iPod off of the nightstand and jammed it into his ears, throwing it on shuffle and cranking up the volume as loud as it could go as he took the stairs two at a time and all but sprinted for the back door.

He was halfway out the door when he realized it. The song blaring through his headphones was one that he had never heard before, a melodic and haunting tune that he did not recognize. More so than that, it was one that he was entirely certain he had not put on his iPod himself.

_Sixteen moons, sixteen years  
Sound of thunder in your ears_

_Sixteen chances to be free_

_Light and dark splits sisters three…_


	4. I don't want your crown

Even after he had shut his iPod off and shoved it back into his pocket, the haunting melody remained in his head. Every time he tried to push the words out of his mind they would return, more persistent than ever until he found himself humming the tune himself. He made his way down the main street of the village, nodding to people as he made eye contact and trying to ignore the inevitable whispers that had followed him ever since his mother's death. People loved to talk about tragedy, it seemed, always in hushed whispers as if grief and loss were somehow contagious and would strike them if they spoke about it too loudly. It wasn't spiteful or cruel, Tom had decided, it was just human nature. There were always going to be people who talked about him behind his back, tut-tutting over how the poor little Branson boy had lost his mother and how he was coping with it lately—that is, there would be until he was finally able to get out of Downton for good as his brother had. But as he thought back to how his father had been lately, Tom felt more trapped than ever. If his father was still acting like this four months later, what would he be like a year from now, or two years even? Would Tom ever truly be able to leave him behind, knowing that he might never get his father back again?

But to Tom's surprise, when he listened to the murmured conversations in the streets, they were not about him at all. The name Crawley seemed to hang on everyone's lips, just as Mrs. Hughes had warned him. Everyone was speculating, wondering why they had chosen to return to Downton Abbey after so long and comparing notes to see when the last time they had seen a true member of the Crawley family. Most of them seemed to have adopted Mrs. Hughes' attitude towards the situation—they seemed suspicious and unwelcoming, even though the family had not even set foot on their estate yet. Tom was more confused than ever. As far as he knew, the Crawleys had never done anything to merit this hatred that the villagers seemed bent on harboring for them. Yes, they owned a good portion of the village still, but how bad could that possibly be? _Maybe it's not them that they hate, but the idea of them…of someone being so far above them on the social ladder that they can control nearly everything in the town. I could see that, I suppose…it's 2013, what do we need huge estates and titles for anymore? That stuff should have died out years ago, but it managed to survive somehow, clinging to tradition with an iron grip…but is something like that really enough to make them hate an entire family for something they really have no control over?_

This animosity towards the Crawleys was making less and less sense by the minute. Tom needed answers, and there was only one person who might be able to give them to him. Tom needed to go and see Matthew.

Tom sped up down the cobblestone streets, shoving his hands deep into his pockets. He kept his head down, hoping to avoid detection by anyone he might know. Ordinarily he would text Matthew to let him know he was on the way, but in his rush to leave the house he had left his mobile phone charging on the nightstand. Maybe it was for the best—fewer distractions that way, and no chance of Mrs. Hughes calling to repeat her cryptic warning for him to stay away from Downton Abbey. Tom shook his head, wondering why it meant so much to her that she stay away from these newcomers. Someone was hiding something, and Tom intended to find out who—or if not, to at least try to piece together as much of the puzzle as he could.

He glanced up as he crossed the street, making sure he wasn't about to collide with oncoming traffic. Downton might be a sleepy village, but that didn't mean there weren't a few cars meandering down the little side streets out running errands and the like. In front of him on the other side of the street was a girl, her nose buried deep in a book as she walked as if she were straight out of a scene in _Beauty and the Beast._ She had long, dark hair that was pulled back out of her eyes in a simple ponytail, and she was dressed in jeans and a turquoise shirt, her feet stuffed into battered black Converse. Somehow, even in such a casual outfit she seemed to convey an air of propriety and class, as if she had been brought up to demonstrate perfect posture by walking around with a book balanced on her head. Tom almost smiled at the image, squinting at the girl to try and get a better look and almost praying that she would turn around to face him. He told himself it was because he wanted to see the cover of her book, but he knew better—he wanted to get a look at her face, to see if it matched the persona he had given her while standing there waiting to cross the street.

Just when he was about to give up and just cross the street himself in the hopes that he might be able to catch up to her, she turned ever so slightly. Tom only got a glimpse of one pale ear and the side of her neck before his stomach almost lurched in recognition. Without even seeing her face, he felt as if he _knew_ this girl. It was the same feeling he would get every night as he dreamt about the girl standing in the middle of the tempest, that gut instinct that he could not explain and yet told him, without a shadow of a doubt, that he _knew_ this stranger in front of him. His breath was suddenly stolen from his lungs, and he opened his mouth to call out to her as he darted out into the middle of the street.

Suddenly there was the sound of screeching tires as the driver leaned on the horn, startling Tom out of his reverie. He froze in his tracks as the car braked harshly in front of him, unable to believe that he had nearly gotten himself killed over a girl he didn't even know. The driver stuck his head out the window and began to scream at him, fountains of obscenities that Tom was no longer paying attention to spilling from his lips. He muttered an apology and all but scurried across the street, his eyes locked on the last place he had seen the girl with the book.

She was nowhere to be found. It was as if while he had been distracted by the car that had nearly run him down, she had vanished into thin air.

Tom swore under his breath, unable to shake the feeling that he had missed his chance.

He ran the rest of the way to Matthew's house.

Matthew and his mother lived in a modest house near the center of the village, known to the locals as Crawley House. Tom had always assumed that it was called that because of Matthew and Isobel, but now he began to wonder if there was more to the story than that. He waved to Mr. Molesely, who often helped Mrs. Crawley around the house and was hard at work in the garden. He found the front door unlocked, as he had known he would even though Isobel's car was missing from the driveway. "Matthew?" he called, poking his head inside. When there was no answer he called again, coming in and closing the door behind him. "Come on, Matthew, it's past eleven, you've got no excuse to still be in bed…"

"I'm not," came his friend's familiar voice, and Matthew appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. His blonde hair was still rumpled from sleeping, sticking up here and there, and he held a bowl of cereal in his hands. He gave a sheepish grin. "Ten minutes ago I was, though. You came here just in time."

For the first time all morning, Tom found himself smiling. "Looks like I did," he agreed. "Got any more of that?" he asked, gesturing to the cereal. "Mrs. Hughes is on a rampage this morning and snatched my plate away before I could finish eating."

Matthew grinned. "Took your plate away? What did you do to her?"

"I wish I knew…"

Matthew retreated to the kitchen and came back with another bowl for Tom, milk spilling over the side a bit when he handed it off to him. Tom wiped his hand on his jeans and followed Matthew into the living room, where they both sat down on opposite ends of the couch to eat. Matthew switched on the television and they spent several minutes flipping through channels to see what was on. Matthew finally settled on a rerun of _The Sarah Jane Adventures_, and they spent several minutes staring at the screen, absently munching on their cereal while Sarah Jane and her friends encountered the Eleventh Doctor after mistakenly thinking he was dead. It was good, mindless entertainment, and for a moment Tom almost forgot the reason why he had come to speak to Matthew in the first place. It was only when Matthew suddenly pressed the mute button on the telly that he remembered what he was doing there at all.

He glanced over to find Matthew chewing his cereal and looking at him expectantly. "I'm waiting," he said good-naturedly. "You don't usually come round at eleven A.M. looking like you just saw a ghost, so I'm waiting for you to explain. Take your time, Tom. Really, I'm still just waking up."

Tom quickly swallowed his mouthful of cereal. "Erm, yeah, actually," he said awkwardly, looking down at his lap. "I was wondering if you could tell me anything about the Crawleys."

For a moment, his friend looked uncomfortable. "You mean my dad's family?" he asked, and Tom was quick to shake his head. Matthew's father, he knew, had died before Tom had moved here. It was one of the things that had drawn them together, the unspoken fact that both of them had lost a parent. It was something they had never spoken of in detail, but it bonded them all the same. "No, not those Crawleys—or, well, maybe," Tom amended. "But I was talking about the ones that lived—live, I guess—over at Downton Abbey."

Matthew's face relaxed, and he set his empty bowl down on the floor. "So you heard, huh?"

Tom nodded. "It's what set Mrs. Hughes off, although I still don't get why."

He watched his friend frown in confusion, just as he had been doing much of the morning. "That doesn't sound like her at all," Matthew said, almost more to himself than to Tom. "I don't know much about them, really. I hadn't even met them before they moved us up here a few years back—you know, the typical estranged relatives that no one really likes to talk about. Mum got the call last night saying that they were cutting their stay in London short and were coming up this week—they've been staying there for the past year or so, I guess. Not sure why they'd want to abandon London for Yorkshire though—it's not like anything of interest has happened in this village in the last hundred years."

"I don't know about that," Tom protested mildly. "But what I don't understand is why everyone seems to hate them when they haven't even done anything yet. I thought Mrs. Hughes was going to lead a group of villagers with pitchforks right to their front door."

Matthew shrugged noncommittally. "Well, I mean, I've only seen them a few times since they left Downton Abbey, but they seem nice enough to me. A little weird, though. I mean, weirder than your average weird relative. Very formal and stuff, old-fashioned, although maybe that's just because of the nobility thing. Mum says they keep to themselves a lot, which is why we don't ever see them and why they don't send us school pictures or Christmas cards even though Mum insists on sending them their way every bloody year. It's sweet, I guess, in a desperate way. Like she's trying to get them to accept us or something. Really, though, is _anyone_ that close with their fourth cousins?"

"Dunno," Tom muttered, slightly distracted as he tried to piece together all that Matthew had just thrown at him. According to Matthew, who probably knew the Crawley family better than anyone in the village, they were nice. Could it be just the fact that they preferred to keep to themselves be enough to condemn them? It didn't seem possible…"So they're weird, yeah? How many of them are there?"

"Five," Matthew responded automatically, busying himself with locking and unlocking his iPhone. "There's the parents and three daughters. They're the sort of girls who you'd think that other girls would worship, since they're so beautiful and rich, but I think most people tend to avoid them. They probably like it better that way. The father, Robert, he's the Earl of Grantham." He gave Tom a sidelong glance. "That's the title that's headed my way one day, supposedly, assuming the aristocracy doesn't fade away before then."

Tom's eyes nearly bugged out of his head. "What?" he demanded, shocked. "You mean _you_ are the one who's gonna inherit all that one of these days? Why didn't you tell me?"

Once again, Matthew looked uncomfortable, as if he was regretting his words. "I'm sure I mentioned it once. It's not something I really like to brag about. I mean, those titles are more or less meaningless these days anyway, what's the point? It just never came up. Anyway…Robert's all right. Old-fashioned, kind of strict, really protective and stuff. I think he likes me, though, so that's nice. Cora's his wife, she's American, really sweet. She's probably my favorite of the lot, but she's a bit…off as well, I can't really explain it. Friendly, though. She and Mum get on pretty well." He paused as Tom nodded before he continued, waiting for his friend to process all of this. "Then there's the girls…they're all right, I guess. Mary's the oldest, she's a few years older than we are…she's.."

He trailed off, and Tom nudged him with his foot. "Oy! You awake there, soldier? She's what?"

"Honestly?" Matthew asked, grinning in spite of himself. "She's a bit of a ball-buster. She's got a temper, and she and her sisters are almost always bickering over something or other…and she's gorgeous, which doesn't help. It's like…she's got the kind of face that could get her anything she ever wanted in life, but she still feels like she has to fight tooth and nail for it anyway, and she does. And, like I said, gorgeous."

Tom wrinkled his nose. "She's your _cousin."_

"_Fourth_ cousin," Matthew corrected. "That's barely a cousin. Besides, who cares? I'm not allowed to appreciate beauty just because we happen to share genetics? I can call Mary Crawley gorgeous if I want to. It's not like I ever stood a chance with her anyway. Trust me, I'm not her type."

"All right, whatever you say," Tom replied as he leaned back against the cushions of the sofa. "What about the other two."

"Well, then there's Edith…" Tom wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Matthew make a face. "She's kind of your typical middle child. Kind of a brat at first, but she's all right once you get to know her. When we first moved here she liked to show me around and stuff, brought me to all these churches and historical sites. I thought maybe she wanted to be friends, but it turns out she was just trying to keep me away from Mary. They're always going at it—Mum spent more time with them all together than I did, and she said she's never seen two sisters fight as much as those two. Apparently it could be a little…explosive. And uncomfortable. Supposedly, Mary doesn't even live with them anymore, and I'd bet anything it's because of something Edith did. Sometimes I feel like Mum knows, but she just won't tell me. And then there's the youngest, she's our age. She's pretty cool, to be honest. She's outspoken, energetic, reads a lot, is always going on about some cause or another—you'd probably like her."

"What's her name?" Tom asked.

"Sybil. Sybil Crawley."

It was if the sound of her name had triggered a chain reaction. Tom felt a jolt go through him, like he had just gotten an electric shock. Her name echoed through his head like the song on his iPod had, a melody so seared into his brain that he knew he would not be able to forget it. _Sybil Crawley. Sybil Crawley…that name. I know that name…_

Matthew was staring at him, and Tom realized that he had sat bolt upright at the mention of Sybil. "You okay?" his friend asked, sounding vaguely creeped out. "You're giving me that look again. The 'just saw a ghost look'. Look, man, I know this house is old, but…"

"No, it's not that," Tom said, shaking his head and standing up. "It's just I…I just remembered I have to do something for Mrs. Hughes. She's gonna kill me if I don't do it. I have to go…" He was already standing up, almost falling over himself in his haste to get out the door. "I'm really sorry, Matthew, but…I have to go."

"All right," Matthew said, although he still sounded concerned. "Just…be careful, mate. You look a bit…deranged. Take it easy, okay?"

"Yeah. Sure. Whatever. I'll talk to you later. Maybe you can come over for dinner sometime this week or something."

"All right. See you."

Tom resisted the urge to sprint out of the house, taking his usual route until he was certain that Matthew wouldn't see him from the windows. Then he turned and started running in the opposite direction. He wasn't headed home—no, far from it.

Tom was going to disobey Mrs. Hughes for the first time in his life. He was going to Downton Abbey.


End file.
